When a restaurant is to serve sliced food items, such as sliced tomatoes, a substantial amount of preparation time would be required at the restaurant to slice and otherwise prepare the sliced products. After the food products are purchased and delivered to the restaurant, typically they would have to be cleaned, sliced, and made available for placement on the salad, sandwich, or other menu item. It is somewhat difficult for the person slicing the food items to prepare slices of uniform width and consistency and there is a substantial amount of waste because of improper slicing, etc. and the potential for cross contamination in the restaurant.
In the instance of fast food restaurant chains, the owners of the restaurant chain usually desire to present a uniform food product, such as hamburgers of uniform size, appearance and taste, with sliced tomatoes applied to the hamburgers, and with the hamburgers and all of the ingredients being substantially identical from one restaurant to another. It has become important that tomatoes, in particular, be sliced to a desired thickness when placed on sandwiches, salads, etc. of a restaurant of a chain of fast food restaurants. This provides the customer with confidence that the food products will be uniform from one restaurant to the other within the chain of restaurants. Accordingly, restaurant managers now prefer to receive food items in proper condition for placement on a sandwich, salad, etc., for immediate service to the customer without preparation steps such as slicing the food products.
Some restaurant and fast food sandwich chains are sourcing pre-sliced tomatoes for their high volume sandwich businesses. Suppliers of pre-sliced tomatoes need to develop methods of slicing and packaging of the sliced tomatoes that will optimize quality of the product when delivered via the distribution systems to the individual stores. The volumes involved dictate that a degree of automation needs to be introduced to the slicing process. Slicing of tomatoes by machine improves production capacity over hand slicing. However, it can significantly affect the initial quality of the tomato slices as well as their ultimate quality when placed on the sandwich. Uneven slices might result from the use of certain slicers that cut individual slices off of a column of tomatoes fed from above to a rotating blade. Such slices become wedge-shaped from the pressure applied by the blade to the side of the tomatoes. These slices normally drop from the slicer onto a moving belt and are hand-collected and assembled into a package tray. It is established that uneven slices lead to loss of a high proportion of the seed and gel component of the slices, hereinafter referred to as the liquid portion. The quality of the slice at the end of shelf-life is demonstrably inferior to processes where the slices are uniform in thickness.
A commonly used slicer has a circular or S-shaped blade that rotates and cuts slices one at a time. These blades have a thickness in the non-cutting part of the blade that creates pressure on the tissue of the tomato as it forces its way to complete the slice. The thick S-shaped knives bend the slices as they cut them, causing a condition known as feathering that causes cracks and damage to the fragile slices and increases purge of the moisture from the tomato. Thin, serrated edge blades on the other hand, do less damage to the tomato while having the potential to cut even slices.
Manual handling of slices of tomatoes, such as outlined above, adds to potential public health issues from contamination and adds to bruising and liquid loss.
Dropping of slices of tomatoes, whether onto a moving belt as explained above or from a slicing process that slices a whole tomato vertically and drops it into a collection device, usually leads to bruising of the slices and can increase loss of the liquid portion of the slices. Bruising leads to the development of “translucency” in the slices, can accelerate deterioration in quality, and this may adversely affect the taste and texture of the slices.
It is therefore desirable that the design and operation of a tomato slicer take into consideration the delicate nature of the tomato and the importance of minimizing the impact of the slicer on the tomato slices.
Various prior art slicing machines have been developed for the purpose of slicing food products. It is desirable that slicers of articles such as tomatoes function rapidly, uniformly, efficiently, and with enough gentle care to not damage the food products, and with the ability to deliver the food products in a handy, attractive condition. For example, it is desirable that tomatoes be sliced and packaged with such gentle care that the liquid portions of the tomatoes are substantially maintained in the tomato slices, not exuded from the tomatoes, and that the circular shape of the perimeter of the tomatoes be maintained without any objectionable bruising or other damage.
By cutting tomatoes in slices of uniform thickness using a fixed blade slicer with all of the cutting blades at one time, a force is applied by the cutting blades to the tomatoes, tending to squeeze or otherwise collapse the tomatoes during the slicing function. In addition, there usually is a phase in the slicing and packaging operation where the sliced tomatoes are dropped from one operation toward another operation during which there is a hazard that the tomato slices will loose some of their liquid portions and that the slices will become tilted or otherwise misaligned with one another, creating non-uniformity of the product in the shipping tray or other package of sliced tomatoes.
For some food items to be sliced, there is a need to discard the end slices such as the opposite ends of tomatoes since the end slices usually are not acceptable for use in the sandwiches, salads, etc., but may be used for other purposes. Capturing the ends on a conveyor makes it easy to either discard them or convey them to a dicer or other alternative use.
The prior art includes U.K. Patent Specification 600,131 dated Sep. 28, 1945 that discloses a slicer that would push potatoes through parallel cutter wires to form the potatoes into a pair of end slices and a plurality of intermediate slices of uniform thickness. The end slices are to be collected separately from the intermediate slices.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,799,496 discloses a slicing device similar to the U.K. potato slicer that would simultaneously push a plurality of tomatoes through parallel reciprocating cutter blades.
These and other prior art slicers function to slice articles such as tomatoes and possibly other similar edible products into slices of uniform thickness as might be desired by most restaurants.
One of the problems with the known prior art slicers is that some tomatoes are so delicate that the slicing, delivery and packing of the tomatoes tends to damage the tomatoes by expelling the liquid portions of the tomatoes from the slices and bruise the tomatoes. Another problem is that the prior art slicers appear to be limited to cutting products of a small range of sizes that tends to limit the sizes of products that can be successfully processed by the slicer. Yet another problem of the prior art is that because the cutter blades of the slicer reciprocate during the cutting of the articles, a relatively long span of the cutter blades must be available for the cutting function and the supports for the blades are so far apart that the blades tend to bend or twist during the cutting function. Also, there is a hazard that the blades are so long that they tend to flex and the fins of the pusher that pass between the blades while pushing the tomatoes will inadvertently engage and damage the blades.
Another problem with the prior art slicers is maintaining the surfaces of the slicers that have intimate contact with the tomato, etc., free of the residue of the tomatoes.
This invention provides the steps of expediently cutting, gathering, and delivering slices of articles, including tomatoes, in such a way as to reduce the hazard of deterioration of the slices, such as reducing the amount of liquid loss from the slices and reducing the bruising of the slices, and is useful for performing these functions over a larger size range of articles. This invention addresses the problems described above.